Smite 2 was a full-on follow-up to the original because it is too old. 'There were many little janky parts about Smite 1 which we were unable address'

What is that sound I can hear in the distance? Is that chanting? Is it the rhythm of a drumming group? A chorus of gaming mice clicking at 180 beats per minutes? This can only mean MOBAs are back.

Steam is feeling very 2014 this week. Valve's launched a new MOBA, Deadlock, while Hi-Rez, the studio behind the eternally-third-place-to-Dota-and-LoL-but-still-beloved Smite, is back with its own sequel after a decade. Smite 2's $30 founder's version, which the developers call a "24/7 close alpha," is now available on Steam. Smite 2 is available to everyone who wants to pay a little money. At some point, it will be free-to-play just like its predecessor.

Hi-Rez launched the original Smite in 2013 as a beta version. In a recent interview with Alex Cantatore at Gamescom, he told us that while many free-to play games like Smite have been updated so many times that they eventually lead to a debate about the ship of Theseus, the original gods-vs-gods MOBA has reached a "technological tie" that is holding it back.

"Smite 1 is built on Unreal Engine 3. The engine was showing its age. Smite 1 had a lot of little bugs that we couldn't fix without investing a lot of engineering. It was better to move to a more modern platform."

S, and Smite's playerbase is larger on consoles than PC. The studio tried to bridge the gap, but it was clear that starting over with Unreal Engine 5 was the best option.

"Our community commented more and more about the HUD. So we embarked on this project to upgrade it in Smite 1 We had a large team working on it for a year and the final product was not very good. The UI of Smite 1 was built on Flash, which had been standard in 2014. It runs at a slower framerate, doesn't feel smooth, and if animation is needed, you'll need to use an old, slow software that's not really around anymore. It takes 10 times longer to do anything. "That's only one of hundreds of small examples that were slowing us down and holding us back."

So: Sequel time! Cantatore said that the move to Unreal Engine 5 was about "building a more solid technical foundation for Smite in the next decade." The improved game looks are a nice bonus, but the biggest benefit is the increased development efficiency. They had to rework Smite 2’s HUD, which was a difficult thing to get right. It took a week-and-a-half. Smite 2 was reworked to look more stylized, and less "default" UE5, in response to feedback from players. It took only six weeks to complete. This new art pass was released with today's 24x7 alpha. Cantatore estimated that it would have taken a whole year to create in Unreal Engine 3

"The speed at which we can move is so much faster." He said that the technical underpinnings of the game are much improved. "We know that Smite 2 has a long way before it is truly a great title. It's still in closed alpha, but we feel we're much better prepared for being a top MOBA game that can last another decade."